Friday, December 09, 2016

1. My admonitions of morning silence to my
three-year-old son, who rises early and exuberantly each weekend
morning, have morphed over time into a shared joke.

At
first, he took charge of morning silence. I began noticing that, if I
tried to tell him something, even in a whisper, Little Man would
smile, place his finger to his lips, and say,
"Shhhh!"

So, one day, as soon as he shushed me, I
jokingly shushed him back, and then would do this the instant he made
a noise of any kind. Having a good sense of humor, he got the joke
right away.

Now, we often start our weekends with a round
of shushing each other. And overall, he usually does a decent job of
being quiet while Mrs. Van Horn and Pumpkin doze upstairs.

2. They're calling them "nuclear
batteries":

New technology has been developed that
uses nuclear waste
to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of
physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a
man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to
generate a small electrical current. The development could solve some
of the problems of nuclear waste,
clean electricity
generation and battery life.

This innovative method for
radioactive energy was presented at the Cabot Institute's sold-out
annual lecture -
'Ideas
to change the world'- on Friday, 25 November. [links in
original]

Later in the Phys.orgarticle,
which also notes the pros and cons of the new technology, there is
mention of a way for interested parties to suggest possible uses. (HT:
Snedcat)

Thursday, December 08, 2016

No sooner do I raise
an eyebrow about the president-elect's meeting with Al Gore, than he
causes a tizzy on the left by naming
one Scott Pruitt as his choice to head
the EPA. But who is Scott Pruitt? "Racist Climate Denier," along
with anything else from the left, is entirely devoid of meaning,
whether because it is a smear or a boy crying wolf. And, as of this
morning, Wikipedia wasn't that helpful regarding either his
qualifications to run a government agency or what he might do with
such authority, once he had it.

But I found the following
from a piece
in the Weekly Standard about Oklahoma's Attorney
General:

[Pruitt] has challenged the EPA's practice of
going far beyond its authority to attack the energy industry and thus
affect practically every industry in the country. The EPA needs a
leash, and Pruitt and other state attorneys general have gone to court
to attach it.

Pruitt, 48, is a sharp critic of
President Obama's "exceeding" of federal law in environmental and
other cases. "He's kept his promise that Washington knows best,"
Pruitt told me in 2013. But Obama's executive orders are "not
consistent with our Constitution and our rule of law."

He
and Greg Abbott, then AG of Texas and now the state's governor,
succeeded in voiding a dubious EPA rule that claimed air pollution
from Texas and Oklahoma was harming Granite City, Illinois. In that
case and others, EPA's evidence was pretty skimpy.

Even
worse in the view of the environmental lobby, Pruitt is a leader in
the effort, so far successful, to block the Clean Power Plan and the
vast change it would require in how electricity is produced. The plan
violates "at least three separate statutory bars and two
constitutional limitations on federal powers," Pruitt's lawsuit to
overturn the plan says. [bold added]

The piece goes on to
note elation on the part of "free-market groups," and that's
understandable, given the low bar set by President Obama and the
prospect of Hillary Clinton as his successor. However, putting a "leash"
on the powerful EPA,
is not the same thing as abolishing it, not that I would expect my
views to be widely shared among potential appointees for any such
office.

So, assuming this is Trump's choice, he sticks with
it, the article accurately describes Pruitt's views, and he wins his
confirmation battle ... he may be about as good a pick as we can
expect. That is, Pruitt might reverse some of the EPA's worst recent
excesses, providing us a reprieve from much of the economic damage it
is set to wreak. But the EPA looks like it will live to fight,
reinvigorated, another day.

I will not complain about
breathing room, but I will not call it victory.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

We're getting the usual calls after the presidential election to do
away with the Electoral College, especially since the Democrat who ran
as one lost. Indeed, the left has been pushing for some time
to effectivelyabolish
the Electoral College. I have always been against such efforts, and
agree (as explained in the first link) that this institution helps
preserve the voting power of the individual in that
contest.

And a recent editorial
from RealClear Politics lends more weight to that argument by
considering the likely consequences of abolishing the Electoral
College, in light of the fact that, like Bill Clinton (twice), neither
candidate in this election won a majority of the votes,
anyway.

If we abandoned the Electoral College, and adopted
a system in which a person could win the presidency with only a
plurality of the popular votes we would be swamped with
candidates. Every group with an ideological or major policy interest
would field a candidate, hoping that their candidate would win a
plurality and become the president.

...

Unless
we were to scrap the constitutional system we have today and adopt a
parliamentary structure, we could easily end up with a president
elected with only 20 percent-25 percent of the vote.

Of
course, we could graft a run-off system onto our Constitution; the two
top candidates in, say, a 10-person race, would then run against one
another for the presidency. But that could easily mean that the
American people would have a choice between a candidate of the
pro-choice party and a candidate of the pro-gun party. If you thought
the choice was bad this year, it could be far
worse.

Regarding Bill Clinton, Peter Wallison notes a
psychological corollary to the role of the Electoral College in
insuring, as mathematician Alan Natapoff once argued, that the most
consistent competitor wins: it is a mechanism for establishing
legitimacy. Says Wallison, "[T]here was never any doubt -- because he won an
Electoral College majority -- that [Clinton] had the legitimacy to
speak for the American people."

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Remember when I pointed
out how similar the election of Donald Trump was to the passage of
ObamaCare? As Nancy Pelosi so patronizingly put it, we needed to pass
the ACA to find out "what's in it." This is proving doubly true of
Trump. The same man who has (had? was rumored to be thinking about?) a
climate contrarian heading
up his EPA transition team has reportedly just had
a tête-à-tête with climate
alarmist Al Gore, which the former called a "productive" "search for
common ground." (Pro tip: Never open suspicious
packages.)

Regarding this, John Hinderaker of Power
Line opines:

This is the peril of nominating a
candidate who has no track record in public life. Donald Trump
hasn't spent his adult life studying and dealing with public policy
issues. That is precisely why many of his voters liked him; fair
enough. But the down side of a candidate with no track record and a
lack of fully thought-out stands on the issues is that he may blow
with the wind. [bold added]

This is not to say
that Hinderaker doesn't have a point here: There is an argument for a
presidential candidate having some sort of public record, in
terms of us knowing how effective he might be once in office, but that
still leaves the question of, "Effective -- at
what?"

Trump's ramblings show not just a lack of study, but
a lack of principles
guiding his thinking, and that is real peril here: We've
elected an unprincipled man to our highest office. "Make America great
again?" In terms of its early -- if inconsistent -- commitment to all
men being equal? Or in some Rooseveldtian sense? (Take your pick.) Or
in Obama's sense, on the premise that he merely executed his plans
poorly? Who knows?

Not having studied certain issues deeply would make someone unclear about policy specifics, but there would only be a range of variation in what those policies might be from a principled man. If, for example, slavery were an issue, a principled man might come up with any number of different ways of ending it, but he would not invite someone famous for, say, arguing that slavery is good for the slaves to discuss "common ground" when contemplating policies or choosing advisors.

That said, Trump has mentioned having an "open
mind" about global warming, which reminds me of the following,
by Ayn Rand:

[There is a] dangerous little catch phrase
which advises you to keep an "open mind." This is a very ambiguous
term -- as demonstrated by a man who once accused a famous politician
of having "a wide open mind." That term is an anti-concept: it is
usually taken to mean an objective, unbiased approach to ideas, but it
is used as a call for perpetual skepticism, for holding no firm
convictions and granting plausibility to anything. A "closed mind" is
usually taken to mean the attitude of a man impervious to ideas,
arguments, facts and logic, who clings stubbornly to some mixture of
unwarranted assumptions, fashionable catch phrases, tribal prejudices
-- and emotions. But this is not a "closed" mind, it is
a passive one. It is a mind that has dispensed with (or never
acquired) the practice of thinking or judging, and feels threatened by
any request to consider anything.

What objectivity and the
study of philosophy require is not an "open mind," but an active
mind -- a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to
examine them critically. An active mind does not grant
equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating
forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by
assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions
and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an
active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with
assailants -- a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith,
approximation, evasion and fear. [bold
added]

Regarding "equal status to truth and falsehood"
(and, in Gore's case, the arbitrary), the
only winner possible
from such a meeting was Al Gore. If, as Trump asserted during his campaign, global warming is a scam, the only
rational thing to do with someone like Al Gore is to refuse to give
him any pretense of having something constructive to add to the
national conversation. That Trump entertained Gore at all shows a
concerning shallowness of conviction on his part, about this issue at the very least -- an issue he ran on. And it grants Al Gore a level of legitimacy he
doesn't deserve.

I did not support Trump, nor did I expect
great things from a Trump presidency. But I was beginning to feel a
modicum of relief that he might offer some breathing room by some
combination of (a) stalling or even partly rolling back some of the
worst leftist policies, while (b) not being able to enact his more
worrisome anti-capitalist ideas. Between Trump's "deal" "with" (i. e.,
fascistic jawboning of) Carrier and this meeting, I am not so sure
even that much is warranted.

Monday, December 05, 2016

One of the things I miss the most about living in St. Louis is the
fact that the older, "streetcar" suburb where we resided was
relatively dense and had streets laid out in a grid. I still had to
drive a lot more than I did when we were in the middle of Boston
before that (and easily got by without even owning a car). But it was
still easy to do things on foot, or even using public transit. On
sunny days, I would sometimes take the ten- or fifteen-minute walk to
a nearby commercialized area and pick out a coffee shop for
work.

In Maryland, I need a car to do almost anything, due
to our suburban street layout. (And yes, I live on a cul-de-sac.) As
you may have guessed, we live in an area built after World War II. On
top of that, I bet you probably also thought, as I had, that this kind
of development has been what the market has demanded for a long
time. As it turns
out, we are wrong on that second count:

The Federal
Housing Authority embraced the cul-de-sac and published technical
bulletins in the 1930s that painted the urban street grid as
monotonous, unsafe, and characterless. Government pamphlets literally
showed illustrations of the two neighborhood designs with the words
"bad" and "good" printed alongside them.

The FHA had a hand
in developing tens of millions of new properties and mortgages, and
its idiosyncratic design preferences evolved into regulation. From the
1950s until the late 1980s, there were almost no new housing
developments in the U.S. built on a simple
grid.

Yes. Central "planning" is to blame for the
spaghetti-like mess at the edges of those cities that
aren't also laid out that way. The article linked above also
notes that, on top of this layout necessitating more driving, it is
also less safe than the older layout. This last fact may be due to the
more traditional grid requiring drivers to pay more attention to what
they are doing, or drive more slowly.

I have encountered so
many instances of the octopus of the state slithering into so many
disparate areas of our life that this should not have surprised me and
yet it does, a little. And if it surprises me, I am sure others with a
more naïve view of government regulation would be incredulous at
best: The idea of not trusting the government the next time it tells
us how to build communities might not even occur to
them...

Saturday, December 03, 2016

As you may have guessed from the title and form of yesterday's post, I
have decided to change my posting schedule. The reason for doing so is
to give myself a couple of deadline-free mornings on weekends for writing
and writing-related activities that aren't directly
related to the blog. (I'd been juggling these most days with very inconsistent
results.) Interestingly, although this
involves a lighter posting schedule, it is possible that, once I get
used to the routine, I will produce more posts per week than I
used to. I'm not committing myself to that, though.

The new
minimal schedule will be as follows:

Monday-Thursday: One
Post

Friday: One Hodgepodge Post (This will consist of a
"Three
Things" section, usually of things I like or find interesting; a
"Weekend Reading" section of Objectivist commentary from publications
aimed at the general public; and sometimes an additional
section.)

Saturday: Optional Post

Sunday: No
Post

I will also experiment with Friday being entirely devoted to
the blog, with activities ranging from the creation of extra posts (on
those days when the posts are practically writing themselves),
administrative work, or working to better publicize my writing (which
I haven't really been able to do for the past few years).

I
have been thinking about making a change like this for some time, and
a very productive weekend (made possible by writing a Saturday post in
advance recently) confirmed for me that this was a good idea.

Friday, December 02, 2016

Here's my advice, then, if you see a cold-looking child and want to help. Put a sock in it. You don't know anything about this situation. Does it look like the child is in imminent danger of dying of hypothermia? No? Then go about your business.

And yes, her story is "better" than mine, although it may be that I can credit keeping my mouth shut for that fact.

2. On the proper way to preserve historic buildings, from the man who saved Houston from zoning back when I lived there:

When Milkovisch passed away, his property was purchased by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. That group wanted to preserve the Beer Can House from demolition, but rather than follow the typical pattern of trying to get a law passed, they put their money where their mouth is. This is the proper way to preserve historic buildings. And it is the proper way to celebrate and preserve Houston's heritage. [link dropped]

If I haven't said so already, I'll say it now: Despite its name and focus, there is plenty of material of general interest at Objectively Houston.

3. According to Walter Hudson of PJ Media, sometimes you have to say, "Because I said so":

Now that I have some experience, I realize that blind allegiance to parental authority is often precisely what is called for. I don't have time to explain the intricate nuances of every decision to the satisfaction of a three-year-old. More importantly, I shouldn't have to. There may be contexts when his prompt obedience could ensure his safety. More commonly, prompt obedience facilitates a productive routine. It isn't practical to make every moment teachable. Sometimes you just need to get moving.

This is true, although I stay away from that phrase as much as I can. I have found that I can often sneak in something like, "I'll explain why later," or even, "I've already told you why," particularly with my five-year-old.

"[I]n fact, [Castro] is no more than a cigar-smoking, dictator version of the relative who tells you to not be selfish." -- Michael Hurd, in "Fidel Castro's Overdue Demise" at Newsmax

"[T]he emotional effect of even the smallest breach between thought and action can slowly chip away at the peace of mind we try so hard to achieve." -- Michael Hurd, in "How Psychological Disorders Sneak Up on You" at The Delaware Wave

"I view gossip as a compulsion to talk about other people, regardless of the facts, for the express purpose of feeling better about yourself." -- Michael Hurd, in "Gossip vs. Self-Esteem" at The Delaware Coast Press